Indigenous shearing school opens up doors

It's long been said that Australia has ridden on the sheep's back. Now one man in Brewarrina, NSW is striving to keep that tradition alive by sharing his knowledge of shearing with a new generation of Australians.

The Merriman Station shearing school has a unique charter. Owned by the Indigenous Land Corporation it aims to boost the numbers of young people going into shearing, wool classing and related professions, and find jobs for young indigenous Australians at the same time.

Ian Bateman, who runs the school, has been shearing for 40 years. An indigenous man himself, he knows how important it is for young indigenous Australians to have the training that can lead to real employment opportunities.

The school, which has recently taken in a new round of recruits, runs for 11 weeks at a time. Students graduate with a certificate in horticulture and an industry benchmark of shearing 80 sheep a day. Over the past 12 months, around 20 out of the 30 graduates have found full time employment.

However the school is not for the faint hearted with the first two weeks spent in a "boot camp" designed to reduce the initial intake of 20 down to 15.

"It's a hard industry and it's a hard life so we can't mollycoddle them," Mr Bateman says.

Despite the challenges, there's no shortage of applicants. Ian Bateman reckons there were as many as 48 for the current round.

Merriman Station is owned by the Indigenous Land Corporation, which purchased it in 2006 for $2 million. The idea was to create a shearing school that could tackle the shortage of shearers in the region, which at that time was down by around 400 shearers a year. Mr Bateman says the recent drought has seen sheep numbers around the country decline so the shearer shortage is no longer as acute. However demand for wool classers remains critical.

Both men and women, aged between 16 and 26, are eligible to apply for the course, which also includes competing in shearing competitions around Australia.

Craig North, eastern divisional manager of the Indigenous Land Corporation, says the school is as much about learning life skills as anything else and he is proud of what the young people can achieve.

"It's quite unique - it's one of the few schools that are doing what it's doing, and having the success rates in what it's doing," he says. "We're very pleased."

Mr North says that the Indigenous Land Corporation hopes that the school will become a permanent feature in Western New South Wales.